hereby
offended," let me point out that there is no other way of dealing with
the subject critically, except perhaps by leaving a page blank save for
such words, in the middle of it, as "Victor Hugo is Victor Hugo; and he
is for each reader to take or to leave." _He_ would, I think, have
rather liked this; _I_ should not, as a person, dislike it; but I fear
it might not suit with my duty as a critic and a historian.

CHAPTER IV

BEYLE AND BALZAC

There may possibly be some readers who might prefer that the two
novelists whose names head this chapter should be treated each in a
chapter to himself. But after trying several plans (for I can assure
such readers that the arrangement of this History has been the reverse
of haphazard) I have thought it best to yoke them. That they have more
in common with each other, not merely than either has with Hugo or
Dumas, or even George Sand, but than either of these three has with the
others, few will deny. And as a _practising_ novelist Beyle has hardly
substance enough to stand by himself, though as an influence--for a time
and that no short one and still existing--scarcely any writer in our
whole list has been more efficacious. It is not my purpose, nor, I
think, my duty, to say much about their relations to each other; indeed
Beyle delayed his novel-work so long, and Balzac codified his own so
carefully and so early, that the examination of the question would need
to be meticulous, and might even be a little futile in a general
history, though it is an interesting subject for a monograph. It is
enough to say that, _generally_, both belong to the analytical rather
than to the synthetical branch of novel-writing, and may almost be said
between them to have introduced the analytical romance; that they
compose their palettes of sombre and neutral rather than of brilliant
colours; that actual "story interest" is not what they, as a rule,[124]
aim at. Finally--though this may be a proposition likely to be disputed
with some heat in one case if not in both--their conception of humanity
has a certain "other-worldliness" about it, though it is as far as
possible from being what is usually understood by the adjective
"unworldly" and though the forms thereof in the two only partially
coincide.

[Sidenote: Beyle--his peculiarity.]

Of the books of Henri Beyle, otherwise Stendhal,[125] to say that they
are not like anything else will only seem banal to those who bring the
banali